


ask me if i'm sick and i will lie (i'm a mess, but i'll tell you about it later)

by teddy_the_bear03



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Copious Amounts of Fluff, Cuddling, Fire and burning, Flashbacks, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, M/M, Magic, Nightmares, PTSD, Pancakes?, Torture, be safe!, but they are also a little fruity..., can be read as platonic!, fjord eating pancakes by the dozen, just guys being dudes..., nott is the best character, soft things, trigger warnings here!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29386929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teddy_the_bear03/pseuds/teddy_the_bear03
Summary: During a pause in the Mighty Nein's adventures, Caleb and Fjord find themselves sharing a room. Caleb, self-conscious about his night terrors (namely, Fjord knowing about them), brings it upon himself to not sleep for the next three days - which goes about as well as one might expect.
Relationships: Fjord/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 4
Kudos: 90





	ask me if i'm sick and i will lie (i'm a mess, but i'll tell you about it later)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DJBitterBlade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJBitterBlade/gifts).



> Aaaah, hello! This is... my very first fic for the Critical Role fandom, and I'm incredibly excited about it! I've only just started getting into this series, thanks to my dear friend DJ, and I am enjoying it so, so much - and for some reason, I really got stuck on Caleb and Fjord. These two have just seemed to worm their way into my heart, and I really wanted to write something for them, so here it is! I relate to Caleb heavily on the whole PTSD thing, so my apologies if you can tell where I projected juuuust a little bit - I tried to keep it as authentic and true to trauma survivor's realities, as I am one myself. That said, I would like to warn readers about a semi-graphic depiction of CSA (Trent Ikithon more like Trent Bitchithon) and torture by fire. Thank you for reading, and kudoses (and comments!) are always appreciated. <3
> 
> The song in the title is called Pasadena, by Modern Skirts! I recommend a listen.

Three days. He just needed to stay awake for three days.

They (the Mighty Nein, as he had so kindly named them) had migrated to a small, out of the way tavern where they were to be presumably staying for the next three days. Caleb and Nott had quietly come along - Nott thrilled to have company and the opportunity to steal, Caleb because he was a sucker and could never deny her - and had figured they were residing together when Jester had swung her arm around Nott’s neck, grinning brightly.

“I think we should have a girl’s room!” She says, reaching for Beau, who dodges the loop of her arm but isn’t so lucky with Jester’s fingers encircling her wrist. “We can, like, do makeup and stuff!”

“Makeup?” Beau repeats, nose wrinkling. If she’s trying to hide her disgust and spare Jester’s feelings, she’s doing an awful job of it - Caleb has to hide his smile behind his book. “Uh…”

“That sounds lovely,” Mollymauk smiles, tail curling amiably, and Jester jumps in her seat with a cheer. “You don’t mind me joining, do you?”

“Not at all!” Jester replies. “You’re really good at it, so I don’t mind!”

“What about us?” Fjord drawls, knowing better than to loop Caleb in for a side hug. He stands with his arms crossed, the hilt of his sword clinking against his belt. “Are we bein’ excluded?”

“I mean, not exactly,” Jester says, “I didn’t know you wanted me to do your makeup, Fjord! I have this great pink eyeshadow you’d love, and-”

“Man, I’m real tired,” Fjord interrupts, making an overexaggerated yawning noise, and Caleb would feel sorry for the way Jester’s expression falls had it not been so funny. “I appreciate the offer, Ms. Lavorre, but I’m gonna head to bed.”

“I’ll sneak into your room during the _night_ and make you beautiful!”

“The sleep fairy of my dreams. For real.”

And with that Fjord retires to bed for the night, with the last thing Caleb sees of him being the way he reaches over his shoulder to rub his back as he enters their - what he’s guessing, at least - shared room. It clicks shut, and Caleb hopes he hasn’t locked it.

“Are you going to be joining us, Caleb?” Nott asks, the metal of her rings cool against the hot skin of his arm. “God knows you need it,” she says, and her smile is genuine - to make a point, she brings up her nails to fleck some dirt off his cheek. It’s the only touch - hers - that he doesn’t flinch away from. 

Just for her he considers it briefly, but shakes his head. “Nein, I think I’ll pass,” he says, patting his chest for the familiar ridge under his shirt. “Thank you, though.”

“You’re welcome anytime, handsome,” Molly chimes in, waving to him as he begins walking.

“Oh, I know,” Caleb replies. “Will you be sleeping in our quarters, too? When you are done, I mean.”

Molly grins. “No, I don’t think so. I’m one of the girls for this stay.” Jester gives the magician a fist bump (and Beau a quiet _nice!_ ) as Caleb nods, not fully turning his back to them as he makes his way toward his and Fjord’s room.

“Have a nice night, you four,” he calls out, and doesn’t check to see if they hear - merely turns the brass door handle and lets himself in.

The room is dim in lighting, the darkness of night pouring in through the not-yet shut windows - one is slightly ajar, and a chilly breeze makes the curtains sway just a _little_ too close to the flickering lanterns. Two twin beds are parallel to each other, covered in navy sheets, with a small nightstand in between them - there is a holy book and a travel brochure set upon its surface, and Caleb makes a mental note to leaf through both later on. Besides that there is not much else, aside from a ratty knitted rug and a dresser that has certainly seen kinder days.

Fjord has already made himself comfortable on the rightmost bed, his falchion splayed out on his lap as he cleans it with long, sweeping strokes. The blade glimmers in the light, and he’s so focused that he doesn’t notice the wizard’s arrival until he places his things down at the foot of the other bed, gingerly shedding his coat to drape it over one bedpost.

“Jeez, you scared me!” Fjord exclaims, yellow eyes wide with his trademark flinch. Caleb had come to associate the action with him, and since then, he’d begun to notice the way the half-orc would jump at even the smallest of noises. He didn’t know whether it was from pure cowardice or something heavier - his own reflex had been trained out of him. “You’re awfully quiet, y’know that? Quiet as a…”

“Cat?” Caleb asks, snapping his fingers, and suddenly Frumpkin appears next to Fjord, meowing softly and pressing his face into the fabric of Fjord’s shirt. His eyebrows raise to his hairline but he sets his sword aside, Frumpkin’s head bobbing up and down under the weight of Fjord’s gentle scritches.

“I was gonna say mouse, but this is better,” he replies, and then murmurs a series of sweet nothings accompanied by enthusiastic facial gestures when Frumpkin purrs into his hand. “Didn’t feel like getting dolled up, huh?”

“Too much trouble,” Caleb laughs, but there is no mirth behind it. “It takes enough time, cleaning myself off. I wouldn’t wish that upon anybody else.”

“Aw, c’mon,” Fjord says, watching Frumpkin’s tail curl as he gives the cat long pets down his back, “I’m sure Jester has a few spells up her sleeve. She’d get you looking dazzling in no time.”

“If by dazzling you mean covered in five pounds of glitter, I think I will stick to my five pounds of _dirt_ ,” Caleb laughs, laying down on his bed and allowing his eyes to flutter closed. Fjord has no retort, and instead his mind is filled with the sound of Frumpkin’s low purring and the half-orc’s occasional cooing.

After days of hypervigilance, hackles constantly being raised out of fear that they would be attacked or ambushed again, a warm bed was the closest thing to heaven Caleb had felt in a while. It was as if a leaden weight had set upon his chest, spreading out toward his limbs and face, relaxing them despite his will - he didn’t want to fall asleep, knew that he couldn’t lest he strain the relationship he had with Fjord, and all the reading he had to catch up on wouldn’t get done if he was unconscious. He’d always struggled with nightmares, but Nott had been there to comfort him through them - she knew all the right words to say in order to pull him out of that headspace, hot and crackling and horrible, and without her he knew that sleeping was dangerous. More often than not he’d wake up screaming (something Nott was used to and usually quieted before the rest of the Mighty Nein could hear), and Fjord didn’t need firsthand experience in how awful Caleb’s night terrors were - if he could help it.

So he forces his eyes open, wincing a little as the light is too close to his face - with his exhaustion Frumpkin had disappeared, and Fjord had returned to tending to his falchion with care. His hand splayed over the handle while the other wiped it down with a cloth, one of his tusks caught on his lip in concentration, and Caleb allows himself the opportunity to look on (why, he doesn’t want to think about too much) for a moment longer before getting up, rifling through his bag to find the books he’d been collecting.

He plucks the oldest one out first - the shopkeep had said it was over 100 years old, and the way the script was barely comprehensible, he believed it. Most of it had been written in pen, some of the ink smudged where the writer had let their arm or sleeve drift along the text still drying - it takes a little more concentration that usual for Caleb to make it out, and his head seems to fog up a little, unable to retain the words entirely. He reaches inside his bag once more for a hair tie, too much of it falling into his face, and he only briefly catches the way Fjord stares at his features, no longer covered. The laughter from the room next to them rattles the wall, and more often than not, when it rings out Caleb will turn to Fjord, who is already smiling at him knowingly. His silence is companionable, and it stretches out into the night until the warlock is dozing off and the lantern is nearly at its wicks end.

“You should go to bed,” Fjord murmurs, half-asleep.

“I could say the same to you,” Caleb responds, not looking up from his book. The turn of the page is loud, and Fjord hums noncommittally.

“Don’t have to ask me twice,” he says, rolling over. His pillow is no longer under his head but instead between his arms, clutched close to his chest. “Blow the light out when you’re done, yeah?”

“Of course,” Caleb murmurs, already lost in the book once more.

The light goes out on its own, and Caleb replaces it a moment after. The second one burns until daybreak.

The ancient book has been replaced with one much more recent, and he’s about halfway through when Fjord stirs again. The curtains (which had never been drawn) now frame an elegant picture of daylight, streaming in from where the window faces east - it shines onto Caleb’s calves and knees, pants pulled up halfway, and he basks in the warm light as Fjord turns around to look at him, eyebrows furrowed with dawning worry.

“Youuu… did not sleep,” he points out, his speech slightly slurred, and Caleb chuckles before shutting his book. He stretches his back and winces as it cracks, not having moved for the better half of eight hours. Fjord looks a little more worried at how loud the subsequent pops are.

“You are right about that,” Caleb affirms, stretching over the bed long-ways. His fingers reach toward the foot of the mattress, and he doesn’t notice how Fjord’s eyes follow him. “I had a lot of reading to get done. I’ll try to rest tonight.”

“ _Try_ to,” Fjord comments, shaking his head. “You’re burning the candle at both ends. Sleep is important - do you want me to head out while you rest?”

That… actually didn’t sound all that bad, but Caleb knew the others (especially Nott) would worry if he didn’t come to breakfast, wasn’t up and drifting behind them like a ghost when they did whatever they saw fit. He shakes his head and pulls the tie from his hair, grimacing at the greasiness of it all - he should make a point to _bathe_ today. “It’s alright,” he says, “I’ll be fine. Eating something will help me regain my strength.”

“Yeah, that should do you good,” Fjord agrees, swinging his legs off the bed to stretch. He seems to glow in the sun, nightshirt thin over the curve of his arms, and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to bother with actual clothes so Caleb figures he’s fine, too, as he fastens the bandages and gloves to his arms. “I think I saw on the chalkboard out front that today is _pancake_ day.”

“Really, now?” Caleb asks, raising an eyebrow. He can’t stifle the smile that blooms over his features when Fjord nods, smug beyond belief. “I hope you’re right.”

He is right, and Caleb is sure of this by the way he and the rest of the Mighty Nein watch as Fjord wolfs down three plates (each with a stack of four pancakes) in one sitting. It costs a little more than they’d been willing to spend, but Fjord had settled against the booth with a happy sigh as Jester clapped him on the back and Nott licked up the rest of the syrup, so Caleb didn’t really see the loss. At one point, Nott turns to him, reaching out to touch his cheek.

“The bags under your eyes are looking worse today,” she notes softly, as to not disrupt the other conversation.

“I’m okay,” Caleb says, touching her hand with his own. “I just didn’t sleep. I was caught up in reading, you know?”

It wasn’t exactly a lie - a half-truth, as he _had_ been reading, although staying up the entire night was more than on purpose - but she sees through him anyway. She gives him a look in between disbelieving and concerned, and he hopes his smile in return is as reassuring as he wants it to be.

The rest of their day is spent as unplanned as it had been the moment they’d woken up - they’d all gone to a bookstore, where Jester had embarrassingly read a passage aloud from her new favorite erotica author, and then to a local garden where the butterflies had been as big as Caduceus’s face (they knew by the way one landed on his nose, its wings spread along his cheekbones as he looked at it with wide eyes).

When they reached the tavern once more, night had already hung her far-away stars in the black curtain of the sky - Caleb could’ve counted them all, with the way no streetlights seemed to find themselves here, but he was absolutely too exhausted to do so. He stumbles on his feet as they make their way back to their beds, and Nott gently squeezes his hand before letting go, heading into her own room - he presses into Fjord for support, and hums at the way he can feel the half-orc’s soft laughter rumbling from his chest.

“Told you you’d be sleepy,” Fjord says, opening the door with a loud creak. Caleb says nothing, simply walks forward and flinches at the bright light on the nightstand.

He’s halfway asleep already by the time he falls onto the mattress. The hands that partly undress him are deft and colder than the rest of him - Fjord takes his time unwinding the scarf from around his neck and pushing the coat from his shoulders. He laughs breathily when Fjord struggles with the boots _(“How the hell do you get these on in the first place?”)_ and sighs when he’s tucked in, sheets being pressed beneath his body weight so he felt more akin to a burrito than he ever had before. It’s warm and it’s comfortable, and somewhere in the dim rattle of his mind he knows that he should be fighting to stay awake - but he can’t, the clutches of sleep and Fjord’s hand on his covered knee far heavier than any resolve he had left.

When he wakes up, he is there again.

He knows the feeling as though it had happened yesterday - the way his cheek is pressed against the polished oak wood of the desk, the oscillating fan cool against the bare expanse of his thighs. His breath comes out in low, hushed noises, blue eyes wide and panicked as they attempt to latch onto any semblance of security - nothing is found, only empty rows of school desks staring back at him. There is a presence behind him, one horrifying and just out of sight, and he is stuck in a state of limbo - waiting for the shoe to drop as he is humiliated (for the first time? The second? The fiftieth?)

But he knows he would’ve been content to stay in that tense lapse of silence had he expected what was to come next - he lurches forward, nails digging crescent moons into the desk as his jaw drops open in a silent scream. He’s pleading in his head - desperate, sobbed _no’s_ that seem to overpower the one before it - but no one comes. No one is around to hear him. No one is around to save him.

One gnarled, bony hand finds its way to his bare hip, squeezing hard enough to bruise - the other finds his wrists, pressing them together and gripping them tightly lest Caleb get the idea to fight back. And then they begin to grow hot, searing his porcelain flesh enough that handprints will be left on his skin - Caleb thrashes and screams aloud this time, moving enough that he clatters the golden name tag set on the desk to the floor with the name _Trent Ikithon_ engraved on it. The hand on his hip leaves, and he basks in the momentary relief before long spindle-fingers find their way around his neck, squeezing, scorching against the frantic bob of his Adam’s apple - he can’t breathe, choking on the reek of burning and crushed windpipes, he can’t breathe, he can’t _brea-_

On his next inhale he is no longer in the classroom, but instead in a dungeon. His heart is going a mile a minute already - he recognizes this, knows where he is, and immediately _does not want to be here_. Where his arms had been held over his head by a hand, they are no longer - instead, it is a set of chains, rusted and worn from overuse. He is not the first person to have been here, and he certainly will not be the last.

He whimpers as the gears in the walls around him creak, turning with him none the wiser - there’s nothing he can do to defend himself, robbed of his power here, and he sees an all-too familiar silhouette watching him from where the concrete ends and the glass begins.

As the gas begins to pour in, he struggles against the cuffs - he squeezes his eyes shut, both from the might of his tugging and to perhaps stave off seeing the fog that would ruin him, and pulls until he sobs brokenly, his shoulders aching. He moves from side to side, wincing as his arms pop and shift unnaturally, but his nostrils are filled with a sharp tang and the tears that roll down his cheeks are hot.

“Don’t, please,” he begs, not even _sure_ the person on the other side of the glass could hear him, “please, I’ve learned my lesson, I…”

“You have not,” they boom, crackly through magic he could not sense over the stench. “This will teach you properly.”

“No, no, please, I’ll be good, I…”

His pleas erupt into wails as a spark ignites in the room. It rips through the gas and billows into the entire room, atom upon atom catching aflame to explode toward him in a fiery rage - it _hurts,_ it hurts so bad and there is nothing he can do to escape it as it eats his scarred flesh, clothes crumpling like newspaper as it burns off of him. His wrists ache from where the metal constricts against them, everything red - too red, too bright and Caleb is sure that he is dying.

He wheezes uncontrollably once, twice, three times and then he’s gone, the dungeon replaced with a sky as dead as night - the same sky he’d tried to admire earlier. It has bore witness to all of his sins, including this one - now collapsed from the desk, he sits on his knees as he watches his family home go up in flames.

They lick at the sides of the framework in dizzying, beautiful shades of orange and yellow - the grass withers beneath it, as does the already rotting wood, but the screams from inside are much louder than any crackling or the moan of the ceiling beams as they cave in on themselves. The tears streaking down his cheeks are cold from where the fire has illuminated them - his hands are dirty, soil caked deep under his fingernails from where he’d clutched at the ground, and he stares at them as though they aren’t his own.

Those hands were the ones who cast that spell. Those hands were the one who set this place aflame. “Those hands killed your parents, Bren, and you’ve done a very good job.”

Bren - Caleb - spins his head around to see Trent looking at him, gaunt features brought alive by the fire eating away at the structure in front of him. He’s the ugliest thing Caleb has ever seen, and bile rises in his throat as Trent reaches for him - knobbly hands grasping his chin to wrench it forward, forcing him to stare at the way the night-shadows are scared to the edge of the forest by the fire. He hears the sound of glass breaking, an anguished cry and the stars are not disturbed, but the quiver of his jaw tells him that his mind is not as strong.

It is hot. It is _so_ hot, it is all consuming and too close, too close and he is suffocating, and -

He jolts awake, gasping for air. His blue eyes are wide, panicked in the dark - he can’t see, he can’t _see,_ the only glow coming from somewhere too close to him and all of it is too much, still. Tears are spilling over his lashes before he can even think to stop them, the flames summoned from his plight crawling up his arms, singeing the bandages off his skin - his fingers dig into his cheeks, sobs forcing themselves out of his throat like thorn-teeth as all of the grounding techniques he’d been taught fly out of his head. He doesn’t know how long he would’ve stayed like that, in a state of panic so severe he legitimately thought that he would be dying come the clock striking the next hour, had Fjord’s broad silhouette in the dark not crossed his vision.

The next pained noise that comes out of him curves up like a question when the half-orc comes into view, yellow eyes like the finest topaz as the fire between them roars in his irises - he reaches out, calloused green hands gently fastening onto Caleb’s burning wrists, and his grip is gentle but firm when the wizard struggles to break free. If the fire hurts Fjord, he hides it well - he does not falter as Caleb hiccups, fists tight as he whines.

“Breathe,” Fjord says, low and soft enough to cut through the haze of Caleb’s mind, and he shudders. “Breathe, Caleb. You’re not there anymore.”

“I don’t want it,” the wizard whimpers, eyes squeezed shut, “I don’t want it anymore, please, I’ve been good, I promise, I…”

“I know,” Fjord replies, and his voice is so genuine that Caleb is so inclined to believe him. “You’ve been doing so well. No one’s mad at you, and nothing bad’s gonna happen. You’re okay.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be bad, I learned my lesson, please…”

“Nobody said you were bad, Caleb. It’s okay. Look at me, handsome,” Fjord says, pulling one hand away from the wizard’s wrist (whose flames were considerably less powerful and all-consuming) to gently caress his chin. Where Trent’s fingers had been cold and spindly, Fjord’s were alive and held his face like it was worth something - thick enough that Caleb, despite his instincts screaming for him to pull away harder, finds it easier to press his nose into Fjord’s palm, eyelashes sticking to his skin as blue eyes find their way to the warlock’s face. “We’re safe, now. You’re safe. Nothing’s gonna hurt you, as long as I’m around. I won’t let it. Y’hear me?”

Caleb nods mutely, not trusting his voice. The fire is gone, now, and with it the glow, leaving them entirely in the dark - the wind slips in through the recently cracked window, and it makes Caleb’s chest warm to know that Fjord had probably opened it to cool him down beforehand. He relies on the half-orc to ground him, so he is not lost in the liminal space of lines that make up the nightstand, the bed he sits on - and when Fjord begins to get up from where he’d been kneeling, Caleb lets out another small whine, clutching onto the other’s hands.

“I’m not going anywhere, I swear,” Fjord says, smoothing his palm onto Caleb’s shoulder, “just standing up. I’m gonna help you get back into bed, okay?”

“Ja,” Caleb whispers, focusing on bringing his legs back up onto the mattress - when Fjord helps him adjust his head on the pillow, his hair tie digs into the base of his skull, and he huffs as he discards it onto the table beside him. Fjord’s tucking him in, pressing the sheets under his lithe frame, when he reaches out - fingers finding their way into the fabric of Fjord’s nightshirt.

“Stay…” He says, and swallows anxiously. “Stay with me. Tonight. Please.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t have anywhere else to be,” Fjord jokes, and a small laugh is drawn from Caleb, “I’m right here, okay? Just shake me if you need anything.”

“No, I meant - can you… hold me,” Caleb reiterates, and he watches the way Fjord’s mouth opens and closes a few times before he nods, leaning over to rest the bulk of his shoulder against the sheets. It’s an awkward shuffle, Caleb scooting over so that Fjord can have more room - his calves are cold against Caleb’s warm ones, and the twin mattress does nothing to help the way they press against one another, Caleb’s back to Fjord’s chest.

Slowly, tentatively, Fjord’s arm winds its way around Caleb’s waist - he is muscled where Caleb is thin, and like the hand that had been on his cheek, the wizard finds himself curling into it like it was second nature. He lets out a shaky breath, trying his best to relax under the newfound weight, and Fjord’s voice is gravelly with sleep when he speaks.

“This okay?” He asks, and hums when he feels Caleb nod against him. “Tell me if you need anything.”

“I will,” Caleb replies, and lets his eyes slip shut when he feels Fjord’s bicep shift - the half-orc’s hand finding his arm, devoid of the bandages he’d burned off a few minutes prior. He tenses - Fjord can probably feel them, the deep ridges of scars long since healed on his skin but his mind not so lucky, and he hopes the other can’t feel the way he’s begun to tremble again.

His fingers follow the scars as delicately as a road map, skimming over the fine hair of his arms. “Is _this_ okay?” Fjord queries again, and Caleb inhales deeply before nodding again. “I think every part of you is lovely,” the warlock murmurs, and Caleb smiles into the pillow, even if right _now_ he doesn’t believe himself worth the attention.

He lets the drowsiness overtake him, then, Fjord carefully tracing the spider-veins of the marred flesh - he follows them to a tee and when they veer off in a direction he doesn’t account for, simply backtracks and begins to mark his path once more. When he reaches Caleb’s elbow, he stops, sliding his hand down to join their palms together - the scars they’d drawn from their blood oath brushing together. Fjord tugs Caleb’s hand over his body to bring it to his lips, tusks gently grazing it - it’s an odd feeling, but one he doesn’t mind in the slightest, and finds himself cuddling closer into the firm warmth of Fjord’s chest. He feels Fjord’s smile against the back of his head as he moves to hold the wizard again.

“G’night, Caleb,” Fjord rumbles.

“Good night, Fjord,” Caleb replies, and kisses Fjord’s knuckle as he allows himself to drift off peacefully.


End file.
